Umbrella Corporation - German? (and more background on the company)

[News Bot]

Brief History of Umbrella Corporation

• Spring 1968: Ozwell E. Spencer, Edward Ashford and James Marcus establish "Umbrella Pharmaceutical".
  
• Unknown Dates: Two more companies named "Umbrella Medical Equipment" and "Umbrella Industries" are established. The companies form a konzern; a conglomerate named the "Umbrella Corporation".
  
• 1984: Umbrella Japan Co., Ltd is established.
  
• May~October 1998: The biohazard caused in the Arklay Laboratory leads to a string of events which seal the corporation's fate.
  
• 1999: Many lawsuits are filed against Umbrella. The U.S. Government issues an indefinite suspension of business decree to Umbrella U.S.A.
  
• February 1999: Umbrella U.S.A. stocks crash and the company goes bankrupt, no longer operating in America. Business begins to stall for the rest of the company and sales steadily decline.
  
• September 18~23, 2002: Umbrella lose many valuable samples and customers due to the bioterror incident on the Spencer Rain. The secret auction planned by Ozwell E. Spencer to procure funds for the revival of the corporation fail.
  
• February 18, 2003: The T-A.L.O.S. Interdiction Operation takes place. Both T-A.L.O.S. and Sergei Vladimir are destroyed, and the U.M.F.-013 is stolen by Albert Wesker.
  
• 2003: Albert Wesker turns in data from the U.M.F.-013 as evidence against Umbrella to the Supreme Court. The corporation loses all of its cases.
  
• 2003, 4th of unknown month: Umbrella Headquarters announces that it is close to being placed in receivership.
  
• 2003, unknown date: A business suspension order is issued to dismantle the Umbrella Corporation. Some of Umbrella's dummy companies and branches outside the U.S. continue acting secretly.
  
• March 10, 2004: The Umbrella board of directors decide the dissolution of Umbrella.
  
• March 14, 2004: The "Announcement of Company Dissolution" is posted, and the Umbrella Corporation ceases to exist.

I'm hoping this topic will help flesh out the infamous corporation even more. There's still quite a lot we don't know. I'm in the process of making a major revision to the article on Project Umbrella so this will help a great deal. I have no real idea how accurate the brief history above is, there's still some confusion even with Umbrella's downfall (there are two business suspension orders at two different times) and the exact date the company went bust is also iffy (implied to be 2003 most places, but Umbrella Japan went out "congruent to" the corporation in March 2004). I'd like for it to be discussed in detail here.

Secondly, I believe that Umbrella was originally established in Germany or at least held significant presence there. The Umbrella Corporation itself is a "konzern", which is a German business type. The Ashford family was originally the Krueger family, German aristocrats. Now they are English aristocrats (Ashford is an English name, Alfred was educated in England, they all have quite noticeable English accents in their portrayals). In a CV ad which has a few minor background details from the scenario draft, Alexia was the head of the Umbrella Germany Laboratory when she was nine before becoming head of the South Pole Base a year later.

Spencer is an English surname, but it has French origins. The Spencer family could be either/or. I believe he was referred to as a "count" in the earliest scenario for BH4? If so, that would make him French. The English equivalent to a count is an "earl". Spencer being French would also explain the heavy emphasis on France throughout the series.

Finally, I would really love to actually figure out how Umbrella was structured. It was a konzern, so it was a conglomerate made up of several smaller companies. However, what were these companies? We can be sure that Umbrella Pharmaceutical, Umbrella Medical Equipment and Umbrella Industries were among them, but what about Umbrella Japan, Umbrella Europe and Umbrella U.S.A.? Was Umbrella Japan a subsidiary or an independent company? Were Umbrella Europe and Umbrella U.S.A. independent companies or were they just branches? If they were just branches, what company in the konzern were they branches of? Etc. I'd like to figure this all out.

Here are the relevant excerpts, more will eventually be added as the topic progresses and there is a bigger need (and hopefully, more sources discovered):

BIOHAZARD CODE:Veronica Advertisement (text appears to be from original scenario draft albeit translated, the inclusion of minor background details resembles the bits of info in Noboru Sugimura's GUN SURVIVOR 4 BIOHAZARD HEROES NEVER DIE scenario draft which is publicly available)

"KONZERN"
A huge conglomerate made up of several smaller companies from different fields with a unified vision to monopolize.

Baker FAX correspondence (UMBRELLA)
Copy ~ UMBRELLA site

Pharmaceutical Company Umbrella and its Domestic Corporation Dissolve

The global pharmaceutical company "Umbrella" and its Japanese corporation "Umbrella Japan (Co., Ltd.)" (head office: Tokyo) issued a bankruptcy notice. The dissolution of the company was announced and the liquidation process has begun.

The Japanese corporation of Umbrella was established in 1984. Back when it was founded, it only imported and distributed drugs that were developed in the USA, but in 1987, it initiated the construction of the "Umbrella Laboratory Japan". The company's strong points were the utilization of biotechnology, original research and advancing the development of products.

However, its stock prices dropped beginning with the "Raccoon City tragedy" caused by Umbrella.
The damage done by rumors only added in recent years and the revenue kept getting lower.
There was a multitude of lawsuits concerning the Raccoon City tragedy and the Umbrella head office went bankrupt because it lost all of these cases in the end.
The Japanese corporation of the company was looking for an alienation target, but made the hard decision to dissolve as no domestic and foreign pharmaceutical companies or enterprises pursuing a different business showed interest.



Excerpt from a morning paper on March 15, 2004

Umbrella Corporation

The origin of all the evil in the BIOHAZARD series. On the surface, Umbrella is a well-known giant international pharmaceutical enterprise with the motto of "Protecting the health of the people" and hot-selling products worldwide. Their main industry is pharmaceuticals and the company also developed new medical equipment, and through these achievements Umbrella gained great reputation from the public. But behind the scenes, Umbrella was actually using the Progenitor Virus discovered and researched by its 3 founders to develop B.O.W. for military application. The U.S. government was their first customer, and afterwards more and more people and organizations started to show their interest. Meanwhile, in order to deal with unstable B.O.W., a plan of developing and selling Anti-B.O.W. weapons was made and carried out soon after. While talking about the insanity of Ozwell E Spencer - one of the founders of Umbrella Corporation, the U.S. government and other B.O.W. buyers must take their responsibilities. After the destruction of Raccoon City in 1998, lawsuits were filed and Umbrella was charged to take responsibility for the Raccoon incident and business stalled. Then in 2003, a business suspension order was issued to dismantle and all of Umbrella's business was shut down, and the company eventually collapsed. However, during this time, some of Umbrella's dummy companies and their branches outside the U.S. continued acting secretly. One example is, during the time of "Operation Javier", most of the B.O.W. released by Javier were purchased from them.

[Anders]

People STILL care about the canon???? Wouldn't it be better to beta-masturbate?

[Grem]

Spencer is an English surname, but it has French origins. The Spencer family could be either/or. I believe he was referred to as a "count" in the earliest scenario for BH4? If so, that would make him French. The English equivalent to a count is an "earl". Spencer being French would also explain the heavy emphasis on France throughout the series.

Most of the time, Spencer is referred to as a "Lord" (even in RE1? I don't remember) which is an English title. Spencer is clearly British or Scottish, but he probably have connections of some sort with France. Yeah, no doubt about it.

Secondly, I believe that Umbrella was originally established in Germany or at least held significant presence there. The Umbrella Corporation itself is a "konzern", which is a German business type. The Ashford family was originally the Krueger family, German aristocrats. Now they are English aristocrats (Ashford is an English name, Alfred was educated in England, they all have quite noticeable English accents in their portrayals). In a CV ad which has a few minor background details from the scenario draft, Alexia was the head of the Umbrella Germany Laboratory when she was nine before becoming head of the South Pole Base a year later.

Good idea to bring back that subject, because this is very interesting. Why did they change Krueger into Ashfords? Perhaps because of the link some people could make to nazism. Anyway, I believe that in the beginning Umbrella was meant to be of French, English and German origin. Because I believe that all founders of Umbrella were from these three countries. You have the Ashfords who were originally of German descent, there was also the Henri family who were French (they were founders also, am I right?) and, of course, the Spencer family of English origin. Now, it's almost exclusively English.

[News Bot]

People STILL care about the canon???? Wouldn't it be better to beta-masturbate?

Don't care, don't post. Besides, we're sitting on a lot of unseen beta stuff as it is, including stuff on the original game, more unseen 1.5 material and a lot of Outbreak related stuff. Our priority is with the canon though. We're not short of material.

Most of the time, Spencer is referred to as a "Lord" (even in RE1? I don't remember) which is an English title. Spencer is clearly British or Scottish, but he probably have connections of some sort with France. Yeah, no doubt about it.

Thing is, we don't know if Spencer is even referred to as a Lord. In Japanese, "Lord" and "Sir" are the same (which is why he's referred to as Sir in the official English translation of biohazard).

[Grem]

Yeah, but anyway, they seem to imply that Spencer is an aristocrat Englishman and not a Frenchman. That's what I meant.

[TheBatMan]

Great work this mate, I'll have to speak to you more about this.

Firstly, whilst we know Umbrella's main HQ is in Europe with evidence pointing to Paris, I still think the company was founded in America as Umbrella Pharmaceutical, or Umbrella Chemical Inc if you prefer the botched English translation. Spencer obviously got things up and running in Raccoon City, largely on his own I assume as Marcus was too wrapped up in Progenitor at this point. We know Ashford returned to England to work independently (CVX Kaitai Shinsho confirms Ashford residence is in England ) so his influence and wealth could be responsible for the first continental branches of the company. This would tie into Germany if the family was originally named Krueger and also explain why Alexia was head of the German branch in 1979. There is never any mention of a UK branch of Umbrella so perhaps this small aspect in regards to the change of nationality of the family was overlooked. Or alternatively, perhaps the Europe HQ was originally in Germany before being moved to Paris at a later date.

Thinking about it, these 'branches' could indeed by smaller independent companies, but run under the same management system which fits into the definition of a 'Konzern' according to Wikipedia. This 'system' being the core parent company which is re-branded Umbrella Corporation.
After all, we know Umbrella USA was responsible for the Raccoon biohazard and that a business suspension is slapped on then in 1999 and they cease trading. This would make more sense if it were a company in its own right rather than a 'branch' of Umbrella. Why punish one branch rather than the whole company?

I'm stabbing in the dark a bit here but it is interesting, and hopefully Archives 2 will flesh out the breakdown of Umbrella in more detail to help us out.

Severasl sources seem to suggest Spencer is English rather than French, and this would go some way to why he know's Ashford so well. A fellow English noble socialising in the same circles.

[Anders]

Don't care, don't post.

You're kidding, right? I'm just following your lead!

http://www.the-horror.com/forums/showpost.php?p=194007&postcount=2

Besides, we're sitting on a lot of unseen beta stuff as it is, including stuff on the original game, more unseen 1.5 material and a lot of Outbreak related stuff. Our priority is with the canon though. We're not short of material.

You can't win this contest.

[News Bot]

You're kidding, right? I'm just following your lead!

http://www.the-horror.com/forums/showpost.php?p=194007&postcount=2

You can't win this contest.

You actually seem to have misunderstood me. My post was in reference to the whole lapping up of fucking ancient petitions and similar ridiculous behavior. Or are they considered beta material? There's finding interesting stuff about old versions of old games, then there's doing nothing while mentally masturbating over them and gestating about how much better they were without providing anything interesting.

After all, I did say in the same topic:

I like finding out about stuff too. I like seeing what the story would've been like, what they scrapped etc. But I know we're never going to get it no matter how many names we put on a petition. That's the part that bugs me.

I do care for beta material, it's just a lower priority. I do not care about useless shit.

[Anders]

My post was in reference to the whole lapping up of fucking ancient petitions and similar ridiculous behavior.

In which case I concede my original point, however "don't care, don't post!"

After all, I did say in the same topic:

If everything had been proceeding as I had foreseen, I would probably have stated a similar opinion.

[News Bot]

Anyhow, back on topic. Are there any more sources with information on Umbrella itself and its structure?

[TheSelfishGene]

Is the Krueger info not non-canon in that it was a discarded plot point? Not sure how or why this should be used as evidence of anything at all.

[News Bot]

Is the Krueger info not non-canon in that it was a discarded plot point? Not sure how or why this should be used as evidence of anything at all.

It's not really being used as evidence, just to lend credit to the hypothesis that there is (or was) some heavy German roots with Umbrella, which is hinted at by the fact that the Umbrella Corporation is a German konzern.

[Guest]

It's not really being used as evidence, just to lend credit to the hypothesis that there is (or was) some heavy German roots with Umbrella, which is hinted at by the fact that the Umbrella Corporation is a German konzern.

The fact that they used "Konzern" probably just means that they weren't satisfied with their Japanese term for "corporate group", and went the usual route of stealing a foreign word because it sounds fancier. Plus, as far as I'm aware, a "Konzern" is not an actual business type like "AG" or "GmbH".

[Rombie]

^ Agreed. The only other reason I could see this pertaining is that Capcom esentually wanted to akin the idea of the company to real world companies like Bayer, which is German, or other Big Pharma companies which are usually global but originated in either the US or Europe.

[Guest]

The word canon means nothing to capcom lol Trying to piece together a proper story/real story between the games and how they play out is like putting together a 50,000 piece puzzle.... and all the pieces are from different puzzles.